AVANT - LOW LIFE
FROM SEPTEMBER, 1 TO DECEMBER 24 2009
In the early days of cinema, film-makers worked far more than they do today. They were fired by the story that was just beginning, they were doing things for the first time. Picture film and sound film were demanding, and inspired cameras, laboratories, film studios, editing rooms, and cinemas through the world, as well as stars and heroines, that could make cinema rival literature. Cinema discovered its capacity to experiment and try itself out in reality, with reality, to enter history. A century later at a time when Jean-Luc Godard faced film-makers, critics and the public with talk of "the death of the cinema", DV cameras and digital editing hardware opened up new horizons… For four months, Nicolas Klotz and Elizabeth Perceval are taking up residence at the CENTQUATRE to continue the preparatory work they do every day using these tools, involving the writing, actors, fragments of shooting, music recordings, meetings, leading up to the shooting of Low Life, their next feature film, which will start in May 2010.
BIOGRAPHY
Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval are together developing a way of writing and filming that questions both the cinematographic form and the upheavals marking the contemporary scene. In 2003 they created their film production company "Petits et Grands Oiseaux" in order to co-produce "La blessure", their fourth feature film, presented at the 2004 Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors’ Fortnight) in Cannes. With their fifth feature film, "La question humaine", likewise presented at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in 2007, they completed "La Trilogie des Temps Modernes" started in 2000 with "Paria" and including "La blessure". In parallel with working on these films, for some years they have been using DV cameras to prepare material, "Dialogues Clandestins", small films, fragments, cinematographic notebooks, that inspire the writing and making of their full-length films. They have also worked in the theatre, particularly on texts by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Heiner Müller, Sarah Kane, Didier-Georges Gabily, and Jean-Luc Nancy.
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With Ulysse Klotz, Rose-Marie Lausson, Stéphane Batut, Santiago Fillol (Barcelona), Mathilde Girard, Frédéric Neyrat, Jean-Luc Nancy, ACRIF, the Chantiers Nomades, CCCB (Barcelona), Judith Chemla, Baptiste Debicki, Arash Naimian, Maud Wyler, Mathilde Bisson, Marie Kauffman, Valérie Dréville, Michael Evans, Mathieu Moro, "Petits et Grands Oiseaux", Maïa Cinéma…
